Posts Tagged ‘National Archives’

This week has seen the much awaited launch of the National Archives First World War diaries online from series WO95. For those of us who spend their time at Kew it is a welcome relief to have these documents available at the click of a mouse. With many documents out of circulation in order to be scanned over the past couple of years I have had a number of frustrating trips to Kew so I was pleased to hear the news. However, our wait is not over yet as it is only the three cavalry and seven infantry divisions which made up the original BEF from August 1914 which are online. Previously scanned diaries (many in black and white) have been removed. Revised full colour versions will be released online in the spring with the entire collection available by the end of the year.

Strangely, the media confused these important operational unit war diaries with personal accounts. A small number of personal diaries can be found amongst the official records but there are not that many. Despite this, the BBC in particular, focused on relaying ‘newly released’ personal accounts. This missed the point and, to my mind, trivialised the importance of the announcement. I wonder quite what staff at the Imperial War Museum with their magnificent collection of diaries, memoirs and letters in the Department of Documents thought of this?

On Tuesday I gave an interview for BBC Radio 5live Drive in which I was asked to comment on a couple of readings from personal diaries that have been found amongst the newly digitised tranche. Each subsequent question focussed on what soldiers had to endure and, it being 5live, the importance of sport for soldiers. Only at the end of the conversation could I suggest I was asked about operational diaries and why they are so critical, not only to historians but also the general public and family members interested in finding more out about their forebears’ wartime service. It seems inexplicable that this confusion occurred.

I also gave an interview for Russian World Service which can be accessed below. During this I was asked what I thought would be the most important developments over the centenary period. Whilst having British war diaries available at the click of a mouse is wonderful, I firmly believe that it is only by using extant German primary source material that our understanding can grow. I sincerely hope the next four years sees a growing interest, not only in British records, but in a wider appreciation that much of the history written over the last hundred years has been done so using limited sources. As historians we want to find the truth, not a slanted or biased version of events.

Released alongside the British war diaries was an ambitious crowdsourcing project “Operation War Diary” which, it is claimed, will help us to unlock the data in our war diaries. Further details are available from a dedicated website: http://www.operationwardiary.org/. If it works and the data is fed back into the National Archives’ Discovery search facility it should be a great help. It will be interesting to see if the initial momentum is maintained over the centenary period. Hats off to the National Archives who should be congratulated on the digitisation process – 1.5 million pages is a lot of scanning. Now all we need is to get Germans interested in crowdsourcing and transcribing the millions of untouched pages of material in Munich, Stuttgart and Ingolstadt….

I subscribe to monthly emails from the National Archives with their latest news. Quite why, I don’t really know as I almost never read them but I am now glad that I did subscribe. For some reason I opened this month’s offering earlier today and was heartened to see that our new Somme panorama book was advertised. When I went on the website I discovered it was their ‘Book of the Month’!

Just a pity that despite the email using the new cover, the website below shows the old cover.

It would save much confusion if the new cover (with revised subtitle) was shown rather than that from the 2006 out of print version. Still, mustn’t complain as all publicity is good publicity….

I would welcome any other mentions of the book in any local newspapers, websites, bookshops etc.

N.B. Edit: 14 March – I was at Kew last week for a day’s research and spoke to the man in the bookshop, asking him who chose the ‘Book of the Month’. He replied that it was his choice and when I explained my involvement with the book we had a good chat. He was very complimentary about it and it was gratifying to hear his comments on content and quality.